Tannic Panic! Issue #118: Sciacchetrà Sciacchetrà
Cliffs don’t lie - a wine as beautiful as the place it’s from: Cinque Terre & Sciacchetrà
This week Zach thought it would be cute to “be in Greece” so I’ve been given free rein to feed the people what they need: Sciacchetrà.
If you’ve never heard of Sciacchetra, you’re not alone. It’s far from a household name and I was only lucky enough to stumble upon it myself by crashing my best friend’s honeymoon with an excellent pair of hiking flip flops. I know what you’re thinking – we’ve all been there – but discovering Sciacchetra at a small restaurant in Riomaggiore was one of the highlights of the trip (and possibly, MY LIFE).
What is Sciacchetrà?
Sciacchetrà is a dessert wine made exclusively in Cinque Terre – a breathtakingly beautiful place in Liguria along the Mediterranean coast of Northern Italy. The vineyards in this region span the rugged and mountainous coastal terrain of the 5 villages (hence “Cinque Terre” which literally translates to “Five Lands”) and generally require intensive manual labor to maintain and harvest due to the steep and rather precarious locations of the vines.
“In the Cinque Terre, when we talk about farms, we think in square meters, not hectares.” -Bonanini Samuele Heydi
On my intrepid little sandal-clad journey up the mountain trail between villages (you can hike between all 5 on steep, narrow winding paths if you have the right flip flops) I got to experience first hand what it’s like to navigate the “vineyard areas” and let me tell you – these guys must be in unrealistically good shape. The only way to get to and from most of these plots is to walk. There are no roads passing up over the mountains to connect the villages to the vineyard plots (tourists who are so inclined can take a coastal train ride and save themselves a few thousand calories), so vineyard maintenance requires hiking up and down the old fashioned way.
But the juice is unquestionably worth the squeeze, because not only are the views unparalleled, the wine is exceptional and unique.
The wines are made primarily from a variety called Bosco (minimum 40%), with up to 40% Albarola and 40% Vermentino allowed in the blends. Together, these 3 principal varieties must make up 80% of the blend and often make up more, but up to 20% of the blend can also include other traditional Ligurian varieties, which allows winemakers to craft blends uniquely tailored to their own styles.
The grapes are dried (passito method) and the flavors and sugars are concentrated, producing intensely flavored sweet wines. Fermentation is a slow process and the wines are often aged for extended periods before release. Since a particular glass of Sciacchetrà is what proselytized me, let’s talk about that.
Possa Agricola
The Sciacchetrà that ruined my life was the 2019 Possa Agricola Sciacchetrà, which I tasted at a little restaurant in Riomaggiore (pictured above). It was locally made, they told me, and truly unique among the several they had available. They poured the last glass of the last bottle they had of the vintage for us, and we shared it at the table.
I’d truly had nothing quite like it before — it’s unfined and unfiltered, appearing slightly cloudy in the glass. The aromatics were incredibly powerful. Pronounced aromas of honey, dried apricots, toasted pecans. On the palate there were spicy floral herbs (rosemary, lavender), dried ripe apricots, dried ripe peaches, honey, white flowers, jasmine, honeysuckle. It was deliciously sweet but not overly so, with plenty of acidity to brighten the flavors, and it was full bodied with high alcohol for an unfortified wine (14% abv). The finish was unspeakably long and even savoring every sip it was still gone too soon. The varietal composition was primarily Bosco, with a small percentage of Albarola and Rossesse Bianco blended in.
I proceeded to spend the next year and a half trying to track down another taste of that particular bottle here in the US - but that’s a story for another time.
So who makes this incredible libation?
Possa Agricola was started in 2004 by Bonanini Samuele Heydi in Riomaggiore, one of the villages of Cinque Terre. He was (and remains) committed to producing wines as naturally as possible, avoiding the use of chemicals “out of respect for [himself] and for the entire ecosystem and biodiversity that surrounds us, because protecting biodiversity is one of the cornerstones of [his] thinking.”
If you are interested in learning more about Bonanini Samuele Heydi, Possa Agricola, or the wines they produce, I encourage you to read this awesome deep dive on the man, his work, and the region itself from E&R Wine Shop!
Snippet on winemaking process of the Possa Sciacchetrà pulled from their website:
Winemaking
Grape drying and manual grape-by-grape separation. Pressing by foot, spontaneous fermentation, and 28 days of maceration on the skins. Aged for 1 year in pear and cherry barrels, blending and static decantation in stainless steel.
Well there you have it – an incredible wine you’ve probably never heard of and would never have tasted if it weren’t for me. YOU’RE WELCOME. Now go out there, get yourself a fine pair of hiking sandals, and waltz on over to Cinque Terre to experience the Sciacchetrà first hand.
If this post gets enough likes, I might even drop the link to the flip flops that got me over the mountain.
Until next time, HAPPY DRINKING PEOPLE.
Cheers!
Isaac
Fascinating history! CT is crowded but worth it - I did not have the right flip flops though